Books
A robot learns to be a child
The central character of Kazuo Ishiguro’s virtuosic 2021 novel is an “Artificial Friend” with a young girl’s body.
Lisa Sharon Harper’s memoir of the legacy of slavery
Fortune gives a wrenching account of intergenerational trauma and its costs.
A rabbi’s poetic wrestling with faith after the Shoah
In Yehiel Poupko’s poems, Jewish belief in God groans under the burden of divine silence.
The end of endless wars?
Andrew Bacevich and Samuel Moyn each seek a reckoning on how the United States uses its military abroad.
Giving women a voice at the seder table
Poet and liturgist Marcia Falk attempts to correct the gender bias of the traditional Passover Haggadah.
For Simone Weil, philosophy was not merely academic
Robert Zaretsky offers a vivid picture of how truth telling made Weil’s life complicated.
How harm reduction is winning the war against drug overdoses
Maia Szalavitz tells the story of a strategy that replaces criminalization with empathy.
The mirror world under the sea
Millions of unknown species in our oceans inhabit a universe of storytelling and dreaming.
What does the cross mean for people with disabilities?
David McLachlan proposes a participatory atonement in which God engages creation’s contingency and vulnerability.
Miriam, Esther, and other biblical non-mothers
Lisa Wilson Davison showcases women who thrive despite—and perhaps because of—their childfree state.
Why was the apostle Paul in prison so often?
Perhaps for the same reasons people are today.
American GIs and the chaplains who served them
Kurt Piehler reconstructs the lived religious experience of the World War II battlefield.
On the path to holiness with Dostoevsky
Paul Contino offers a hope-filled reading of The Brothers Karamazov.
The frightening side of baptism
Peter Leithart argues that the sacrament’s violence is surprisingly good news.
Obery Hendricks condemns the sins of right-wing evangelicalism
If his book were a trial, the verdict would be clear: guilty.
Freeing Philemon from the “fugitive slave” theory
Stephen Young lets Paul’s letter speak for itself.
At Tara Isabella Burton’s fictional boarding school, the hunger for transcendence gets dark
A tale of beauty, religion, and how easy it is to exploit them
Why go to church camp?
Jacob Sorenson has written a wise, informative, and practical study of the benefits of Christian summer camps.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim’s theology of visibility
When Asian American women are rendered invisible, the whole church is diminished.
The real Jane Roe
Joshua Prager’s deep reporting reveals Norma McCorvey as never before.